If you’re starting to ramp up your plans for 2018, chances are your plans may involve hiring additional – or different – staff. As this economy slowly stretches in an attempt to reach a comfortable level, many people are beginning to look at their options for a new opportunity. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? You want to hire, and many people are looking for new jobs. Not so fast.

How do you attract and hire the right talent for your organization?

First, recognize that hiring starts at the top. The team you assign to attract the talent you need must have support form senior company executives. It’s often helpful to start with the company strategic plan and to build a recruiting approach to support goals and objectives. You might also consider investing in dedicated internal talent acquisition staff that can “own” corporate recruiting and take that sole responsibility off of those managers that have a full-time job to do.

This internal talent acquisition team should create a strategy and build a corporate recruiting brand. This is a blended approach that involves both high touch and high tech. The “team” can be a single person, or a large team working together – but in either case, the goal should be clear: hire the best talent available.

This internal acquisition team should be responsible for everything from original sourcing to closing on the candidate. They should also start by writing good job descriptions. Well-written job descriptions are a recruiting roadmap. You might also consider creating two job descriptions for each position – one with lots of sizzle used for marketing, and the other with more depth. The first version gets posted everywhere and is used to attract potential candidates. The second is provided only to interested and qualified individuals, and contains job and company details for the candidate and everyone working to fill with position.Remember – good job descriptions are never set in stone – they evolve as jobs constantly change.Your talent acquisition team should post the job descriptions in the right places. They should develop an internet strategy and decide who is going to manage the posting process. Start with posting the job description to your company website. It may sound basic, but we see this happen all the time. Candidates interested in your company must be able to see what jobs you are recruiting for. There are endless other places to post, so your internal acquisition team should figure out what is most suitable for your company. Obvious choices include:

LinkedIn – in jobs, groups, company page and updates

Twitter

Company Facebook

Job Boards

We recommend building a community of talent utilizing up-to-date technology. Implementing an applicant tracking system (ATS) is a must for high-quality acquisition. Think of the ATS as a CRM tool for your applicants – candidates need as much work and attention as your customers do.

Your Internet strategy is an ongoing and ever-changing process. For example, technology is available that links your website jobs with your social media outlets. You only post once and the system automatically sends the job out to other specified place, thanks to the power of meta-tagging.

LinkedIn should be one of your team’s main resources – it is the best online friend for recruiting efforts. LinkedIn is a large database for finding talent, and it is unparalleled for research.

Building up your connections is the fastest way to have access to the greatest number of potential candidates. Reach out to your targeted contacts with the goal of networking for referrals on specific openings.

One can see, there’s a lot of effort and work that goes into attracting, recruiting and retaining the best talent for your needs. With time and effort, your business can build a strong database of candidates that may be looking for an opportunity like the one your organization can provide.If this seems like a lot of time and money – that’s because it is.

Staffing vendors spend tens of thousands of dollars every year on marketing, attracting, recruiting and retaining candidates for jobs across the spectrum. Depending on your needs, you may not need to dedicate these kinds of resources to an internal team. It is possible – for a lot less time and money – to outsource this function to a partner that will know and understand your business and the specifics of the jobs that you have open. Staffing partners offer the specialization of recruiters that perform this job function day-in and day-out. High-quality staffing partners will bring a large database of candidates that already know, like and trust the staffing company – and by extension – the client organization. This saves many hours of searching, attracting and recruiting suitable applicants.

In addition, reputable staffing partners will have already invested in the applicant tracking system (ATS) that allows them to review their database of candidates – though be warned – not all databases are created equal! At Royale Strategy, one of the ways that we are different from many staffing vendors is our database. Our internal database includes candidates that we’ve actually worked with previously – not just anyone that has applied for a job. In this way, we are able to personally vouch for the candidate when we recommend them to you – after all, it’s our reputation on the line!

At the end of the day, hiring the best talent for your needs is not a simple process, no matter how you look at it. However, with a partner like Royale Strategy on your side, we can help make it a bit easier, not to mention faster, to find that next right hire.

Ready to join the Staffing Revolution? Then Let’s Talk! And Remember DO NOT CALL The Royale Strategy Group (www.RoyaleStrategyGroup.com) a “staffing agency” unless of course you're trying to insult us. The Royale Strategy Group "The Anti-Staffing Agency"

As always, please connect with me and drop me a line – I would love to hear from you!